The heart of the City, as I propose to reveal, was situated beneath the Storytellers’ Hall, near the northern end of the Central Way, on your left hand as you passed down from the north entrance-gates. The Storytellers’ Hall was an invention of Carpentaria’s--one of his best. Between two o’clock and four, between five o’clock and seven, and between half-past eight and closing-time you could pay sixpence to go into the Storytellers’ Hall and listen to a succession of American and Irish and English performers, whose sole business it was to sit in an armchair on the diminutive stage and tell funny stories. The entertainment consisted in nothing else. It was the simplest thing in the world, and yet one of the completest successes of the City. It was a success from the very first hour of its existence. The little hall was nearly always crowded, chiefly by men. One is bound to admit that women were not enchanted by it; either they laughed in the wrong places, or they turned to their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews, at the end of the story, and asked if that really was the end of the story, and, if it was, would their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews kindly explain the joke to them. Well, the heart of the City was beneath that gay and mirthful structure. While storytellers told stories above the level of the ground, the most serious business of the City was being transacted a few feet away, below the level of the ground. Let me explain. Take an average intelligent visitor to the City. He approaches, say, the northern entrance, and among the twenty patent turnstiles which confront him he chooses the nearest one that is empty. He puts a shilling on the iron table of the turnstile; an official in the livery of the City scrutinizes the coin to make sure that it is what it pretends to be, and then pushes it down a little hole. The shilling disappears--not only from the sight, but from the thoughts of the visitor. It is a highly remarkable fact--as he squeezes through the turnstile he actually forgets all about his shilling, forgets it for evermore! Yet shillings are being poured in a continuous stream into the mouth of that turnstile and into the mouths of scores of similar turnstiles, all day. What becomes of them? Surely this question ought to interest the average intelligent visitor! What becomes of them? The turnstiles won’t hold an unlimited number of shillings; nevertheless, shillings are falling into them eternally and they are never emptied; they are never even moved; they could not be moved, since they are imbedded in concrete. Here _is_ a puzzle for the average intelligent visitor. It will occur to anyone that when four hundred thousand people have each paid a shilling entrance, quite a nice little lot of money must have accumulated somewhere in the City by nightfall; for, besides the entrance shillings, there is the vast expenditure of the visitors after they have entered.